The Saudi government's obsession with the criminalization of the dark arts reached a new level in 2009, when it created and formalized a special "Anti-Witchcraft Unit" to educate the public about the evils of sorcery, investigate alleged witches, neutralize their cursed paraphernalia, and disarm their spells. Saudi citizens are also urged to use a hotline on the CPVPV website to report any magical misdeeds to local officials, according to the Jerusalem Post.
By 2011, the unit had created a total of nine witchcraft-fighting bureaus in cities across the country, according to Arab News, and had "achieved remarkable success" in processing 586 cases of magical crime, the majority of which were foreign domestic workers from Africa and Indonesia. Then, last year, the government announced that it was expanding its battle against magic further, scapegoating witches as the source of both religious and social instability in the country. The move would mean new training courses for its agents, a more powerful infrastructural backbone capable of passing intelligence across provinces, and more raids. The force booked 215 sorcerers in 2012.
53 comments
I didn't realize that Death Eaters were such a problem in Saudi Arabia.
Once again, education is the answer. We'll just have to revise the Defense Against the Dark Arts curriculum. Now where did Ms. Umbridge go...
Witchcraft trials are taking place in Africa and much of the middle east. Social unrest, and the scapegoating that results in witchcraft trials flourish when the crops fail. In this case it wasn't crop failure per se, it was the increasing cost of imported food.
a more powerful infrastructural backbone capable of passing intelligence across provinces
I rather doubt that. There are no signs of intelligent life in Saudi Arabia (thank you, Gene Roddenberry) right now, if this is what their government is wasting time and money on.
the majority of which were foreign domestic workers from Africa and Indonesia
Of course they were. Though I am surprised those Indian workers I heard about aren't being targeted as "witches", too.
And yet, several centuries ago, Islam illuminated the world with mathematics, astronomy, literature, art, and medicine.
Islane ism in the 21st Century? Sad.
Anon-y-moose: There still are Muslim scientists, astronomers, doctors, and literati. Just not in Saudi Arabia, that's all.
Because if we invalidate your bullshit, we call our bullshit into question... especially the part that acknowledges your bullshit as real.
Next week, we hunt down the Djinn that stole all the flying horses!
@ John_in_Oz
"In the US, it is immigrants"
No one is with hunting immigrants in the US, although many people are asking that immigration laws be enforced so that immigrants enter LEGALLY and not illegally, because currently that isn't happening. It's not about hatred of immigrants. Try talking to a legal resident who's trying to get social services or a job in construction, if you want to know what some of the economic problems are, instead of pointing the witch hunt finger from thousands of miles away because of some hysterical one-sided articles you've read about the US being a "papers please" police state.
@#1582712
That's the state of Arizona with the hysterical papers please law, not the whole US. Although the teabaggers would like to run the whole US that way.
@Reynardine
"Anon-y-moose: There still are Muslim scientists, astronomers, doctors, and literati. Just not in Saudi Arabia, that's all."
And now you know why. My physician is a Sufi Muslim. On the wall of his surgery is a brass plaque, with - in elaborate Arabic calligraphy (Art!) and English - a motto he lives by, which his Imam told him years ago:
'Learn all that is learnable. For Allah has given these things for you to know . '
No wonder then, Saudi Arabia, that you rely on outsiders - non-Saudis - to maintain your very place in the 21st Century.
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?
I guess I shouldn't be surprised at this, given some of the other things that have been happening in SA over the years, but this...this is just nuts.
All the more reason to keep religion and government separate, please and thank you.
@sandchigger: Oui, mais j'ai effectivement fait la orthographe phonétique pour humour. Tu parles français? Moi, je le parle assez bien. J'étudie le français depuis deux ans, mais je fais encore beaucoup de petites erreurs. (Pour une raison quelconque, j'adore le français.)
I suspect that this is, in practice, as it was in early modern Europe, an effort to assert or re-assert traditional patriarchal power and keep women and other unreliable elements in society in their place.
@ Shykid
Don't worry about your French: I know a great many French middle and high schoolers that would be hard-pressed to speak French as well as you.
American fundies hunt down Harry Potter books, Saudi fundies take it to the next level. Now, that's competition...
@Swede : No, in the sixteenth century notions of witchcraft would have been scoffed at in the Islamic world. This squirrel-shit level nuttery didn't come about in the Middle East until Wahabbi factions took control of the region in the early twentieth century, and even then a lot of the super insane stuff seems to have mostly happened in the last forty years or so.
@Sicko
Not at all belive me they will go after of anybody regardless of gender, in fact for the article it seem their focus is more on foreign workers
@Doubting Thomas
But Saudi Arabia is one of the most backwards, uncivilized place in the world, they can just use the oil mony the pretend otherwise.
Personally I think that makes it even worse
Oh my. While they're at it, they should really do something about the influx of goblins and gremlins infesting airplane cabins. It's unsanitary. Not to mention their problem with invasive Dirigible Plums growing everywhere. Surely, Boggarts and Leprechauns are soon to follow if they get out of hand.
Chop, chop, Saudi Arabia! There are so many imaginary problems you have to address! If you don't get a move on, people might start bugging you to solve the real problems!
So, uh, by Saudi logic, the biggest threat to this world would be a woman in skin tight clothing who practices the dark arts?
Actually, it must be a by product of 9/11 or, most probably, the Arab Spring. Since then, the religious police, the Mutaween, are more unpopular than ever, specially since it was discovered that, in reality, far from being pious men who wanted to illuminate the world about Islam, were oportunist ex convicts who wanted to seize power at all costs. On the other hand, Saudi Arabia is the laughing stock of the Arab world, due to both their prepotence and the ridicule they have put the islammic world through thanks to Bin Laden. This new craze for witchcraft may be the last attempt of uneducated sheiks to stick to power, since they're regarded as a joke by the rest of the Saudi population, specially the youth.
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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